Grateful Dead

Associated Press

News about Grateful Dead, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Chronology of Coverage

Jul. 7, 2015

Jon Pareles Critic's Notebook contemplates endurance of Grateful Dead, 50-year-old band that just finished three-day farewell concert that broke attendance records at its Soldier Field, Chicago, location; concludes band's appeal based on qualities that are vanishing, such as never playing song same way twice. MORE

Jul. 6, 2015

The band broke the attendance record at the Chicago venue, eclipsing the mark set by U2 on its “360°” tour in 2009. MORE

Jul. 6, 2015

William Walker drives 900 miles from New Orleans home carting $8,500 worth of audio equipment to tape last Grateful Dead concert in Chicago; self-described 'taper,' Williams has been approved to make noncommercial recordings of band's concerts since 1988, and says method is superior for capturing nuances of a live show. MORE

May. 17, 2015

Many fans who followed band Grateful Dead in 1960s are planning to attend band's final shows under greatly changed circumstances, exchanging beat-up vehicles for private planes and other markers of conventional success; average ticket price for band's Chicago show is over $900. MORE

Mar. 6, 2015

Friday File column; New York Times archives highlight Village Vanguard club when it opened in 1935 and performance of band Grateful Dead in 1967. MORE

Nov. 4, 2013

Former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh agrees to business arrangement to work exclusively with concert promoter Peter Shapiro that allows Lesh to play regular concerts yet avoid tedium and grind of working on the road; will perform series of concerts in 2014, putting on 45 shows in just handful of venues. MORE

The Dead did a quick turnabout this week. First, band representatives told the Live Music Archive, at www.archive.org, to stop making available its trove of live Grateful Dead recordings, which have been free online for years. Fans were so furious that within days, the band was forced to relent partway.

The Grateful Dead established a basic template for performances through the 1980's and 90's: two sets, one bright and full of singable hits, the second stretching out into darker, more fractured group improvising but snapping back into the band's rock anthems at the end.

HEY, JERRY -- What's happening? I caught your funeral. Weird. Big Steve was good. And Grisman. Sweet sounds. But what really stood out -- stands out -- is the thundering silence, the lack, the absence of that golden Garcia lead line, of that familiar slick lick with the up-twist at the end...

Jerry Garcia never spoke much during Grateful Dead concerts. The Dead's lead guitarist, singer and main songwriter was a voluble, articulate man offstage. But he worried that any words he spoke to the Dead's audiences in sold-out arenas might be taken far too seriously by fans, who seemed willing to consider him an oracle.

Jerry Garcia, whose gentle voice and gleaming, chiming guitar lines embodied the psychedelic optimism of the Grateful Dead for three decades, died in his sleep yesterday at Serenity Knolls, a residential drug treatment center in Forest Knolls, Calif. He was 53.

In a recessionary pop music environment in which tours keel over and die and radio and MTV stars hit the road only to cancel their tours, the Grateful Dead, 26 years old and counting, are doing better than ever.

A sold-out crowd, estimated at more than 70,000, sang and swayed to every song — a rolling sea of graying beards and ponytails, flowing skirts, cowboy hats and backward caps, flower crowns and bandannas.

Multimedia

Carl (Greg Kinnear) is a former follower - not of Christ, but of the Grateful Dead - who has since become "found" in Dan's Evangelical community, serving as one of the preacher's great examples of spiritual and moral transformation. But Carl's new b